Cop Bastard is a game that asks you to “blast through waves of yakuza in relentless action inspired by ’90s films”, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more accurate elevator pitch.
Despite the Japanese setting, Cop Bastard istrying above anything else toevoke the feeling of shooting your way through a Hong Kong action movie, from the overtly VHS/CRT retro-inspired visuals to the emphasis on corridors and carnage. It’s a game that prides itself on how little there is to it; the graphics are lo-fi, the weapon selection is limited, there are no builds, levels or perks and there aren’t even any puzzles to solve or tracks to back around on.
The focus, then, is on what isthere: a sequence of hallways and staged arenas where you are asked, at speed and without stopping for breath, to make thousands of dudes explode into red mist, using just six guns and a Matrix-style slow-mo attack. I’m normally someone who is a little wary of any game going out of its way to say “we don’t need all this modern bullshit!” in terms of design (as this one does on its Steam page), because they’re often letting some kind of weird YouTube-thumbnail-guy-inspired idealism get in the way of the natural evolution of game design, but in Cop Bastard‘s case it’s a rare win for the nostalgics.
This game is a blast, and it’s interesting coming straight to it from Galactic Racer, another release that was all gas, no brakes. Rather than wear me down or become repetitive, Cop Bastard‘s singular drive instead got me into the closest thing to a meditative state a retro shooter can probably manage, as I glided across levels shooting, taking cover, shooting, moving on and shooting some more. I want to give a particular shoutout to the Beretta 9mm you’re given unlimited ammo for, as it’s both deeply appropriate for the setting and also tremendous fun to fire off.
It’s a bummer, then, that alongside the action Cop Bastard also felt the need to include an ‘Engrish’ voiceover that I’ve seen described as everything from “kinda racist” (every voice wasdone by Timur Kozlovskikh) to “really annoying”.
While there’s a B-movie intentto the voiceover whose execution I don’t quite get (English dubs usually just have regular English speakers!), I can definitely attest to the fact that it’s annoying, especially once I’d played for 10 minutes and had heard pretty much every gravelly quip and soundbyte the game has to offer, only to then be subjected to the same juvenile insults again and again and again.
I’d have much rather had an actual Japanese voice track,a cheesy retro-inspired recording without the accents or, if those weren’t possible, blessed silence (which for some reason the game doesn’t allow, since you can’t toggle the voices off). Basically, anything butwhat Cop Bastard went with.
